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STARS Track FAQ

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Below you will find our most frequently asked questions and answers. 

If you have questions not listed in the FAQ, please submit a help ticket.

General

What is STARS Track?

STARS Track is new functionality added to STARS which assigns to learners what required training courses they need to complete and by when. Most learners who conduct work at Stanford need to take certain required training courses to meet Stanford’s regulatory requirements or internal compliance standards. Learners (for purposes here, defined as people who conduct work at Stanford) will be informed of their required training through STARS All Learning and email notifications.

Who is using STARS Track?

STARS Track is currently in use by early adoption departments in the School of Medicine and Dean of Research. A larger rollout throughout School of Medicine is in process. Further rollout announcements are expected during FY'16 and will be communicated in advance to appropriate parties. 

Can I use of STARS Track for my organization?

Ideally, we would like to rollout more groups with STARS Track at School/VP levels although we are open to working with sub-level organizations with high interest in the tool. Please contact the Learning Solutions Group to express your interest in using STARS Track.

Will STARS Track replace the Training Needs Assessment Tool (TNAT) and what are the main differences between them?

STARS Track does not replace TNAT. TNAT will continue to be available as an advisory tool for individuals to self-assess what types of training they should plan on taking. They should also vet these results with their supervisor or other appropriate party to further verify TNAT training recommendations are relevant to them. 

STARS Track is a more formal assignment of required training that it tracked and is given deadlines to complete. Individuals when they see these trainings in their STARS All Learning screen will not be able to drop or remove these when assigned through STARS Track. TNAT can (if selected) add training to All Learnings but individuals could drop/remove these. 

Use of TNAT and STARS Track can coincide with each other without any adverse impact to either. 

What does the term “Objective” mean as it is used in STARS Track?

An “Objective” in STARS Track is an established training requirement that can be assigned. Objectives are titled with a short indication of the type of work activity relevant to the required training. For example, an objective titled "Work With Computers" would assign the training course "Ergonomics - Computer Workstation" to the learner.

Objectives map to either a training course or training program that can involve multiple courses. Objectives are used in assignment screens and displayed in STARS Track compliance reports.

Learners

Why did I receive an e-mail indicating I was assigned a required training course?

Based on work or activities at Stanford, your supervisor or others responsible for managing compliance training programs have determined that you need to take this training.

A notification was sent to you because your training records in STARS do not have a record of completing a certain required training as indicated in the e-mail.

I have already completed this training so why am I getting this?

Certain training programs may include re-training requirements. Please review the course’s description in STARS for further details.

It is also possible that you may have taken this training before STARS was used as the training management system for Stanford.  STARS was implemented in 2005 so any training registered through STARS should be in your STARS training history.  You can check this by going to your STARS All Learning page.  Click on Training History to see what STARS recognizes as completed training.  Please note you may need to login to Axess before reaching the STARS All Learning page.

If you had completed the training prior to 2005, you are encouraged to retake this training again since information on this topic has likely changed.

I have never received this type of notification before? Is this something new?

Yes. STARS Track which this is a part of is presently in initial roll-out stages. The Overview section of this site provides more information on this.

I noticed in my STARS All Learning a notation indicating a due date? What if I don’t complete the training by that date?

Assignments are tracked in reporting and any training that is not completed by the due date is considered Past Due in these reports. You may receive follow up communications encouraging you to complete your training if you are past due.

I don’t recognize the name of the individual assigning this to me? How can I find out who this is and why they assigned the training to me?

Please lookup the name of the individual in StanfordWho. It is likely someone that either works within your department or higher level organization (School or higher operating unit), an individual who manages certain facilities (labs or buildings), or someone that works in a compliance office.

I see that training has been auto-assigned to me. How did this happen?

Certain training assignments have been handled in mass or may have rules indicating that everyone meeting certain criteria needs to take a specific required training course. If this is the case, rules determining those who meet this criteria will initiate an auto-assignment. Auto-assignments are done after there is management approval for conducting assignments in this manner.

How do I complete training assigned to me?

Once you launch your STARS All Learning page, you will see as one of your items the training course listed with a red assignment notation.  To the right of the course title is a green action button.  Please click the button and follow the subsequent pages shown. 

More details on how to complete course can be found within the All Learning FAQ document.

Assignors

I receive a “Nothing to Assign” message when trying to assign a training objective. What happened?

Please make sure you have selected the learner(s) and the objective(s) properly.  Selected learners and objectives are identified with a gray background color.  If you have either not selected a learner and/or not selected an objective, this message will appear.

An objective I have selected is hidden from view. What happened?

The objective you selected may become hidden from the objective list if you subsequently enter a filter afterwards.  Make sure you are aware of any selected objectives before entering a filter and when processing an assignment, double-check the objectives listed are those you desire to assign before clicking the “Assign” button.  

I receive a network related error when processing an assignment. What should I do?

At times the systems are busy, a network connection goes down or some other network interruption happens.  Please resubmit the assignment and see if it completes.  If you continue to receive errors, see if you can login to Axess again and access the assignment page.  If not, it may be a larger outage of Axess services that could be happening.  If after several tries, you see the problem persist, please submit a help ticket with error information.  

I have been processing an assignment but want to clear the list of learners for other assignments. How can I do this?

To clear the list of learners, refresh the assignment page by using the browser’s refresh button.

I get a “please enter a valid date” message when entering a target completion date. What causes this?

This message appears whenever you enter a date that doesn’t match the date format needed (MM/DD/YYYY) or you entered a date prior to today’s date. Please make sure you enter a future date with the correct format.

When finding a learner, I am getting multiple people shown with the same name. How do i determine the correct one?

Try looking up the person in StanfordWho checking the Search and Stanford and Affiliates view checkbox. Compare the SUNet ID in StanfordWho (the one listed first in the SUNet ID’s section) with the SUNet ID’s shown for learner results and select the choice that matches.  SUNet ID searches versus searching by names can be more effective in pinpointing the correct person when common names are involved.

Will learner lookups know preferred names?

Yes, similar to looking up someone in StanfordWho

I start typing a name but nothing is showing up. Why?

There can be some impact depending on network connections and system loads. Try to slow down typing the name/SUNet to see if that helps.

Can I copy/paste a name or SUNet id from another document to find a learner?

Yes. At times, you may not get results. One quick trick is to delete the last character and re-enter it. That could help activate the lookup.

Can I copy multiple names or SUNet ID's at one time to lookup learners?

No. The lookup is designed to process one individual at a time.

I need more information about a particular objective. How can I find this?

Each objective has a “Details” button which will bring up another screen that provides pertinent information about an objective. The screen also indicates who to contact for more information.

I am using the “Type to Filter” field to find relevant training objectives but am not finding what I want. What do I need to do?

The “Type to Filter” field recognizes words that are contained in the title or details of an objective along with other keywords that have been added for that objective.  If you feel a certain word needs to bring up certain objectives, please send an e-mail to the Learning Solutions Group indicating the keyword and objectives that should be associated to it.

I am trying to view the status of assignments for particular individuals but get a “No Results Found” message. Why?

There are two main reasons for this. The first is the learner may not have an active assignment. The second is the learner has not been selected (indicated with a gray background). A third possibility is a network or system interruption. If that is the cause, please try again a little later and make sure your computer is actively connected to the network.

Is there anything that I could leverage to identify training objectives i need to actively assign?

We have developed a checklist that corresponds to all available objectives.  You can subset the checklist by putting an X in the first column of each relevant objective listed and filter on the ones marked X.  The checklist filtered could be printed out as a reference document for further use.  We will update versions of the checklist whenever new objectives are added as a master document available in the Resources page.

I maintain learner group(s) to manage a certain population for compliance training purposes. Can I use these learner groups for assignments?

Yes. We will need to map these learner groups to relevant objectives. Please note that this mapping will process everyone in the learner group with an assignment to those objective(s). To setup learner group use for assigning objectives, please contact the Learning Solutions Group with details on the learner group and which objectives to process assignments for. 

Supervisors

How should I use STARS Track?

Supervisor responsibilities in the context of STARS Track can vary by organization.  A general principal within STARS Track is that supervisors should have visibility and a level of accountability into assuring that their direct reports meet required training obligations.  The STARS “Assign Learning for Team” page within the STARS menu in Axess provides the capabilities to quickly view what required training objectives have been assigned to their team with the status of each and provides a capability to assign training objectives.  Another feature is the ability to waive assignment if it’s not relevant to the work a team member does.

What is the extent of my team I have visibility to in STARS Track?

Supervisors can see their direct reports and one level of indirects. Further levels of supervisory associations would be given to supervisors within their team.

What are supervisory relationships based on?

STARS Track uses the “Reports To” relationship identified in the Peoplesoft HR system to determine these relationships.

How can I view team members required training assignments and their status?

Under the STARS menu in Axess, select “Assign Learning for Team”.  The “Direct Reports” section will list all “Direct Reports” and allows expansion to view one level of indirects if they have direct reports.  You can select one or more (or all) direct and indirect reports quickly using the shortcuts provided.  Selected individuals will have a gray color background (white is unselected).  Clicking on “View Team Objectives” button will display all assigned objectives with statuses.  A “Met” status indicates the individual has completed the training requirement.  Needed means they have not started the training, In Progress indicates they started but did not complete the training.  Due dates are also provided.  Anyone that has not “Met” the requirement and has passed the due date would be considered Past Due.

Please refer to the "Assign Learning for Team" job aid for more details.

How do I assign required training to my direct reports?

Please make sure you have reviewed the STARS Track "Assign Learning for Team" job aid before performing assignments.  The job aid provides instructions how to select one or more direct reports the ability to assign one or more required training objectives.

What happens when I waive an assignment?

A waived assignment is a determination by a supervisor that a team member does not need training previously assigned to them. Waive will remove from the team member’s All Learning page the assignment notation and provides them the ability to drop the course. Waive assignments are tracked with a “Waive” status in STARS Track reports.

Compliance Reporting

The Detail Report produced when I click on a metric has more lines than the metric number. Why Is that?

Metrics reflect a count of distinct individuals.  The detail reports can have individuals listed more than once for the following reasons:

  • They have more than one affiliation within the organization. The most common situations are students in an academic organization that also have a paid work relationship in the same organization. They will often be listed with two lines, one with an Affiliation of Student and an Affiliation Qualifier of either regular student or postdoc. An additional line may appear with Affiliation Staff and Affiliation Qualifier of student.
  • Individuals with more than one departmental association within the population run. This can happen when running populations at parent organization levels where the individual has an association with more than one child department.
  • Staff or Faculty with an affiliate status in another department.

Please note that an enhancement has been filed with the reporting team to remove duplications and show only the primary role if more than one association is found. Announcements will be made with updates to training materials when this is in place. In the meantime, you may wish to run reports by de-selecting certain populations using the Affiliation Qualifier filters.  

I see people listed in detail reports that I don’t think are part of my organization. Why is that?

STARS Track reporting is designed to be able to pick up any individual that has some association to your organization within three major university systems, Campus Solutions (for student data), HR (for employee data) and Registry (for affiliates and other non-employee, non-student individuals).

Please look closely at the affiliation and affiliation qualifier columns first. You may find most of those you don’t recognize have Affiliate / Sponsored associations. These are individuals who could have been sponsored by someone based in your organization. To find who sponsored an individual, please use the following link:

https://accounts.stanford.edu/sponsor?execution=e2s1

Type in the SUNet ID of the sponsored individual and click on the Sponsorships link. This will show who sponsored and for what time period.

Other individuals that may not be self-evident in your organization are those with an Affiliate qualifier. These can be Faculty or Staff individual with a “person of interest” record in the HR database. Please refer to the link below for more information on Staff or Faculty Affiliates.

If you still feel an individual is incorrectly listed on the report, please submit a HelpSU ticket and include the name and SUNet Id of the individual in question. 

When I run a report, I get a “There is a pending request to a server” message. What should I do?

This happens with certain report/browser combinations. Simply click OK to clear the message and the report results screen will appear.

Why am I not getting results when I run the STARS Track report for my department?

STARS Track reporting is designed to provide compliance based reports based on those who have been assigned training.  STARS Track reports in addition, will only show training objectives if there is one or more active assignments. 

If you are experiencing no results, work may be needed to initialize assignments for your organization. Please refer to more details on this in the Overview section of the STARS Track website for more information on initializing your department for STARS Track.

What does “Met” mean?

Met means that an individual has completed the required training assigned to them within the rules specific for that training.  In most cases, if there is a person has in their STARS training history a completion for the course(s) associated with the training assignment they will automatically be marked met. There could be exceptions to this if some trainings count completions within a specific period of time.

What is the difference between % Met and % Compliant in the View report results?

% Met is calculated by taking the Met count divided by the Assigned count. % Compliant is calculated by taking the number of individuals not past due (1 – past due count) divided by the Assigned count. % Compliant interprets compliance as anyone who either met their training objection or is still compliant because they have not passed the deadline for completing.

What does “Waive” mean?

Waive means that a Supervisor has indicated that a training previously assigned to an individual is not required. Supervisors are the only ones that can waive an assignment.

I see many people showing up as “Unassigned” that should have an assignment. What is my best course of action to get this done?

The most efficient way to process mass assignments is to contact the Learning Solutions Group to process this request. A mass assignment will identify the assignor as “Auto Assigned” with a default due date calculated 30 days from assignment.

If you feel these assignments should identify an individual and/or have a different deadline, the assignment will need to be processed using the Assignment page give to those who have access to this. The Assignment page has been designed to process multiple individuals with single or multiple assignments however it will require names to be individually looked up.

I see individuals “Assigned” a training objective that no longer need this. How can I get this changed?

There are several considerations for this. If an individual has “Met” the training objective already, the general rule is since there is no required action needed, the assignment should be kept unless there is a strong business reason to remove. If they haven’t “Met” the objective, first look into who is identified as the “Assignor”. Assignors can remove any assignments they made through their assignment page. If the assignor is no longer at Stanford or if it was “Auto-Assigned”, please submit a HelpSU ticket with details the list of individual(s) and what specific assignment(s) to remove for them.